Chapter 4 - The 6:15 to St. Louis
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The 5:55 PM commuter train out of Union Station was only half full, smelling faintly of wet wool, stale coffee, and diesel exhaust as it rattled southward through the freezing industrial outskirts of Chicago.
Clara sat in the last row of the third passenger car, pressing her forehead against the cold, rain-streaked windowpane. Her small black suitcase was wedged tightly between her knees, and her left wrist throbbed with a dull, sickening ache beneath her coat cuff.
Every time she closed her eyes, she didn't see Victor Halstead’s twisted, snarling face in the conservatory.
She saw Lucian.
She saw the way he had stood in the marble foyer forty minutes ago, removing his leather gloves one finger at a time, looking down at her with those devastating silver-gray eyes. She remembered the tiny, metallic clink of the brass key hitting the console table—and the cold, hollow ache in her chest when he simply stepped aside and said, Then go.
What did you expect, you fool? Clara scolded herself silently, blinking back a hot sting of tears as the train horn wailed into the dark dusk. You were his housekeeper. You ironed his shirts, you brought him black coffee when the nightmares kept him pacing the library floor at three in the morning, and you listened to him breathe in the dark. You were never anything more than part of the furniture.
And yet, leaving that house without warning him felt like tearing her own ribs apart with her bare hands.
She reached into her purse and touched the small burner phone she had bought at a kiosk inside Union Station ten minutes before boarding. Her thumb hovered over the keypad. She knew the private ten-digit number to Lucian’s personal cell phone by heart; she had seen it written on the emergency contact card inside the pantry a thousand times.
If she called him right now and said, Don't drink the scotch in the library tonight, and don't trust Victor Halstead, what would happen?
Victor’s raspy, venomous voice echoed in her memory from the conservatory:
"Listen to me very carefully, Miss Hayes. When I paid your father’s dialysis bills two years ago and placed you in this house, I bought your silence. Tonight, Lucian Sterling’s reign ends—not just by my hand, but by order of the Commission in New York. I have two men parked across the street from your Aunt Sarah’s bakery in Evanston right now. If you drop this vial into his decanter at three o'clock, you walk away with a hundred thousand dollars. Since you’re too weak-stomached to do it, you have forty-five minutes to pack your bag and get on the five-fifty-five train to St. Louis. If you say one word to Lucian, or if you’re still in Cook County at six o'clock, your aunt dies in a kitchen fire before dinner, and I’ll hand Lucian the signed contract proving you were my paid spy from the very first day."
A violent shudder ran down Clara’s spine.
She had already called her Aunt Sarah from the station payphone and begged her to pack an overnight bag and drive straight to a hotel in Milwaukee under the excuse of a burst water pipe. Her aunt had promised to leave within the hour, which meant Clara still needed thirty more minutes before Sarah was safely on the interstate and out of reach of Victor’s thugs.
Wait thirty minutes until the first transfer stop in Joliet. Confirm her aunt was on the highway. Then call Lucian and tell him everything—even if it meant Lucian would spend the rest of his life believing the quiet girl who made his midnight coffee had been a traitorous snake all along.
She could live with Lucian hating her.
She could not live in a world where Lucian Sterling was dead.
Suddenly, the overhead fluorescent lights in the train car flickered as the brakes squealed loudly against the iron tracks.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the conductor’s static-filled voice crackled over the intercom, "we have an unscheduled five-minute signal hold just outside the Lemont freight junction. Please remain in your seats until the track ahead clears."
The train ground to a heavy halt on a raised embankment surrounded by dark, snow-covered pine woods and an abandoned brick switching station.
Clara frowned, looking out the window into the swirling fog. There were no other trains on the parallel tracks. Only a single black Cadillac Escalade idling with its headlights off behind the rusted chain-link fence of the old station platform.
Before her heart could even register the danger, the pneumatic door at the far end of her passenger car hissed open.
Two men stepped inside.
They weren't commuters. Both wore dark tailored wool coats, black leather gloves, and had the cold, dead-eyed posture of syndicate buttonmen. The taller one had a thick silver ring on his pinky finger that Clara recognized instantly—it was the mark of Victor Halstead’s personal street crew from the South Side docks.
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Victor hadn't intended to let her reach St. Louis at all. The moment she refused to poison the decanter, he had sent a cleanup crew to make sure she never stepped off this train alive.
Clara’s breath caught in her throat. Without waiting another second, she abandoned her suitcase, slipped out of her seat, and bolted toward the rear vestibule door into the next car.
